Sages

As you read the profiles in Jewish Sages of Today, we hope you want to know more. We hope, for example, that the Yitz Greenberg profile makes you want to hear him lecture; that when you read about Debbie Friedman or Hankus Netsky, you wonder what their songs sound like; that Dennis Prager’s profile inspires curiosity about his radio show; that reading about Aaron Lansky’s adventures rescuing Yiddish books makes you want to hear the story directly from him. That is where this section of the website comes in. Here we take you well beyond the written profile of each sage by providing a rich selection of additional materials.

Click on each sage to go to a comprehensive webpage about them that includes audio excerpts from the interviews conducted for the book, intriguing examples of their work, lists of their selected writing, relevant website links, and other online resources. Full profiles from the book can be accessed from this page – these free profiles are available for educational purposes only. The book is available for purchase for all other readers. Please note that this website launched in early 2012 and is a static site; the individuals profiled in the book have continued to do many amazing things. We hope you enjoy exploring the wealth of material available here.

By Carol Zall
Activist, educational innovator, author, journalist, creator of institutions – Yossi Abramowitz has a long list of impressive accomplishments to his credit. He is founder and until recently was CEO of Jewish Family & Life! (JFL), a Jewish educational nonprofit that produces print and web publications.+full profile

By Sarah Bronson
Rachel Azaria founded the political party Hitorerut Yerushalmim (Wake Up Jerusalemites) and was elected to Jerusalem's city council in November 2008, at the age of twenty-eight.+full profile

By Andrea Gollin
A leading expert on the Holocaust, Michael Berenbaum, Ph.D., has spent the bulk of his career relating the facts of the Holocaust to the world through museums he's helped develop, films he's worked on, the many books and articles he's written and edited, and his active lecture schedule. +full profile

By Laura Griffin
Mira "Milly" Brichto, Ph.D., has worked hard to preserve historic Jewish scholarly works and Torahs that are almost forgotten in libraries throughout Russia and Eastern Europe. "Libraries were victims of the war, too," she points out. "We sit here and these things are withering away." +full profile

By Simona Fuma
Dubbed the "high priestess" of secular Jewish learning by Ma'ariv newspaper, Ruth Calderon is a Talmud scholar, author, teacher, and innovator in the areas of Jewish text study for secular adults and those with no prior religious background. +full profile

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Debbie Friedman had a transformative impact on contemporary Jewish music and worship. Starting with her very first efforts in the early 1970s, she took classical Jewish prayers and text and created songs with elegantly simple melodies and words of gratitude, faith, and hope. +full profileNote: It is with great sadness that we write that Debbie Friedman passed away in January 2011. Here's what she told our writer about how she hopes to be remembered: "I love that I've been given the reward of being the shlicha (emissary) of this music, honest to God," Friedman says. "When I die, I want to be remembered not for all the many songs I wrote, but for helping people to feel and be empowered, to know their strengths and to know that special thing about themselves, that they are the most significant and holy being in the world, and that the person next to them is, too."

By Nancy Wolfson Moche
Blu Greenberg pioneered Orthodox feminism in creating JOFA (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance), and wrote, among other books, the ultimate user-friendly handbook on Orthodoxy for the masses, How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household.+full profile

By Nancy Wolfson Moche
Yitz Greenberg is a rabbi, a history professor, and a leader of many Jewish organizations. He is a seminal thinker on an array of issues including the Jewish people’s encounter with the challenge of modernity; confronting the Holocaust as an historical transforming event; the creation of Israel as the Jewish assumption of power, and the beginning of a third era in Jewish history.+full profile

By Jonathan Vatner
Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman is a professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union College. He has broken impressive ground in the study of liturgy, ritual, and worship, exploring why groups pray as they do. +full profile

By Evan Eisenberg
Tobi Kahn’s artwork is in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, and the Jewish Museum, among others. His canvases straddle the charged border between microcosm and macrocosm, and his Jewish ritual objects and meditative spaces have helped revitalize the tradition of religious artwork.+full profile

By Nancy Wolfson Moche
If Aaron Lansky had not decided to track down the Yiddish books tucked away in basements and attics, the 1.6 million volumes in his twenty-seven-year-old National Yiddish Book Center might now be landfill. +full profile

By Oren Stier
Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, spiritual leader of the Shul of Bal Harbour, moved to South Florida in 1969 at the direction of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to serve as his shliach (emissary). Since then, Lipskar has built a remarkable community.+full profile

By Denise Couture
An untiring advocate for Israel, Laszlo Mizrahi established The Israel Project, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C., in response to negative media portrayal of Israel. +full profile

By Jane Ulman
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, a sought-after speaker, a gifted teacher of Torah, and an author of four influential books, including the 1975 best-selling The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, co-authored with Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. +full profile

By Evan Eisenberg
Nessa Rapoport was only in her twenties when she wrote her first book, Preparing for Sabbath. Her other works include House On The River; as an editor, she is perhaps best known for her work on the 1980s bestseller Iococca. She also has worked for the Mandel and Revson Foundations.+full profile

By Barbara Kessel
Since 1993, Gary Rosenblatt has been editor and publisher of The Jewish Week of New York, the largest (circulation 90,000) and possibly the most influential Jewish newspaper outside Israel. +full profile

By Daniel Treiman
Michael Steinhardt is arguably American Jewry's single most influential philanthropist – a driving force behind the revolutionary Birthright Israel program and a host of other innovative efforts aimed at transforming what he sees as a moribund Jewish communal landscape. +full profile

ByIlene Prusher
Recipient of the 1988 Israel Prize, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz has been called a "once-in-a-millennium scholar" by Time magazine. His work translating the entire Babylonian Talmud into modern Hebrew along with original commentary has revolutionized traditional study. +full profile

By Ken Gordon
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is a man of many interests. He is an influential author – he wrote the 1991 bestseller, Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History – and ethicist (his recent A Code of Jewish Ethics has been embraced by Jews of all denominations). +full profile

By David Green
Efraim Zuroff is sometimes called "the last Nazi hunter." From the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which he directs, Zuroff continues his quest to bring Nazi war criminals to justice and to set the historical record straight. +full profile